Richard Posner
Richard Posner is a highly acclaimed American legal thinker and author of over forty books. Posner has served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for more than two decades, and was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and an economist who has made numerous contributions to both legal and economic scholarship.
Posner was born in 1939 in New York City to an Austrian immigrant father and a first-generation American mother. He received his B.A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1959, followed by his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1962. After completing law school, Posner went on to teach at Stanford Law School, the University of Florida College of Law and the University of Chicago Law School. In addition to his teaching and judicial career, Posner also wrote articles for The New Republic and The New York Review of Books.
Posner is highly respected for his contributions to the study of law and economics, which involves the application of economic theories and techniques to the legal system. His work in this area has focused on topics such as judicial decision-making, legal interpretation, antitrust law, regulation and public choice. Posner has argued in favor of a less formalist, more efficiency-driven approach to making legal decisions. He also has published works in other fields such as sex-discrimination law, constitutional theory, game theory and law and literature.
In addition to his scholarly work, Posner also has been an influential judicial figure. He has authored more than three thousand judicial opinions and served as the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1993 to 2000. During his time on the bench, Posner was noted for his adherence to the textualist approach to statutory interpretation, which calls on judges to decide cases based upon the plain, language of the statute.
Overall, Richard Posner is a highly influential thinker, writer and judge whose contributions have shaped legal thinking for decades. Throughout his career, Posner has consistently demonstrated his commitment to making legal systems less formalistic, more efficient and more transparent. His work is invaluable to the study of law and economics, legal interpretation and judicial decision-making.
